POPLINE

POPLINE (POPulation information onLINE) is the world's largest reproductive health database containing citations with abstracts to scientific articles, reports, books, and unpublished reports in the field of population, family planning, and reproductive health issues. POPLINE is maintained by the [http://www.infoforhealth.org INFO Project] at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health/Center for Communication Programs and is funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). POPLINE is also part of the [http://www.infoforhealth.org/onesource.shtml One Source] database, a combination of resources from six databases produced by the INFO Project.

cope and coverage

POPLINE provides more than 350,000 records citing worldwide literature in the areas of population, family planning, and reproductive health issues. The majority of items are published from 1970 to the present, but there are selected citations dating back to 1827. The database adds 12,000 records annually and is updated weekly.

The database consists of bibliographic citations and abstracts to a variety of materials including journal articles, monographs, technical reports, and unpublished literature.

Subjects covered internationally include Family Planning methods and programs, Fertility, and Population Law and Policy. Additional subjects covered in reference to developing countries include: Adolescent reproductive health, Demography, Environmental Health, Gender and Health, 'Health Communication, HIV/AIDS and Sexually transmitted diseases, Maternal and Child Health, Population and Environment, Related Reproductive Health Programs, and Women in Development.

Database features/services

POPLINE is available on the Internet at http://www.popline.org. It can be searched using either [http://www.popline.org Basic] or [http://db.jhuccp.org/ics-wpd/popweb/expert.html Advanced] search or by browsing the "Instant Searches" on a range of topics. Additionally, POPLINE provides RSS feeds for a number of topics [http://db.jhuccp.org/ics-wpd/popweb/poplinerss.htm topics] , publishes the entire database on CD-ROM, and offers customized searches provided on request to persons or institutions in developing countries.

Full-text copies for most of the documents cited in POPLINE can be requested free of charge via mail or sent by email for persons or institutions in developing countries. In addition to free text searching, the database can be searched by keywords from the [http://db.jhuccp.org/ics-wpd/popweb/Thesaurus/index.htm POPLINE Thesaurus.] , a controlled vocabulary of 2,400+ terms used to index documents in the database.

Recently the term 'abortion' was set as a stop word, removing the ability of users to search for this common term for a reproductive health issue. In response to a question on this, a representative of the company responded that this change was done due to their federal funding. [http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/04/administrators.html]

A [http://db.jhuccp.org/ics-wpd/popweb/search_popline.htm tutorial] is available for instruction on searching the database.

POPLINE history

The original database consisted of citations from POPINFORM, a database maintained from 1973-1978 by the Population Information Program (PIP) at George Washington University. In 1978 the database, along with Population Information Program, moved to the Johns Hopkins University. Between 1980-2001, renamed POPLINE, the database became part of the National Library of Medicine's (NLM) Medical Literature Analysis and Retrieval System (MEDLARS) along with MEDLINE and other NLM databases.

Since 2001, POPLINE has been maintained by the [http://www.infoforhealth.org INFO Project] (formerly PIP), based at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health/Center for Communication Programs. Access to POPLINE is available free of charge at its website.

Other organizations contributing to POPLINE were the Center for Population and Family Health Library/Information Program (CPFH) at Columbia University (1974-1990), Population Index at Princeton University (1982-1998), and the Carolina Population Center (CPC) at the University of North Carolina (1985-1989).

Abortion-related articles

In 2008, the "New York Times" reported that Johns Hopkins University had instructed the POPLINE search engine to ignore the search term "abortion", as it ignores search terms such as "a" and "the", in February 2008 in response to pressure from the United States Agency for International Development. Librarians were informed by a POPLINE manager: "We recently made all abortion terms stop words... As a federally funded project, we decided this was best for now." After learning of the restriction on finding abortion-related articles, the dean of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Michael J. Klag, lifted the restriction, saying: "I could not disagree more strongly with this decision, and I have directed that the Popline administrators restore 'abortion' as a search term immediately." [http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/05/us/05popline.html Health Database Was Set Up to Ignore ‘Abortion’] , by Robert Pear. Published in the "New York Times" on April 5 2008; accessed April 5 2008.]

References

External links

* [http://www.popline.org POPLINE website]